A presidential election will be held in Iraq to indirectly elect the ceremonial president of Iraq. 44 to 81 people originally registered themselves to be potential candidates before parliament closed down the nomination on 6 January. Regular Iraqi civilians have also applied to be presidential candidates as opposition against the ethno-sectarian system, with critics accusing the system of increasing inefficiency, corruption, and deepening sectarianism.
Prominent candidates included former minister of foreign affairs, Fuad Hussein, and former governor of Erbil, Nawzad Hadi of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and former minister of environment, Nizar Amedi and incumbent president, Abdul Latif Rashid of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Secretary-general of the Iraqi parliament, Al-Gargari stated that finalists will be later revealed after process.
Arabic sources have mentioned of 15 candidates being approved by parliament with Fuad Hussein and Nizar Amedi being qualified. Other candidates includes Shwan Hawiz Fariq Nam, Ahmed Abdullah Tawfiq Ahmed, Hussein Taha Hassan Mohammed Sinjari, Najm al-Din Abdul Karim Hama Karim Nasrallah, Asu Faridun Ali, Saman Ali Ismail Shali, Sabah Saleh Saeed, Abdullah Mohammed Ali Zahir, Iqbal Abdullah Amin Halawi, Nizar Mohammed Saeed Mohammed Kanji, Sardar Abdullah Mahmoud Timz, Muthanna Amin Nader, and Nawzad Hadi Mawloud.
The date has been delayed mainly at the request of the KDP and PUK that needed more time to establish their candidates and that said candidates were not approved by Shia and Sunni parliamentary groups yet. Previously, speaker Haibat al-Halbousi and KDP politician Shakhawan Abdullah had announced that the election set to be held on 27 January 28 January, a month after the 29 December parliamentary session following the 2025 parliamentary elections. The Iraqi parliament has previously been unable to be faithful towards dates.
According to the constitution of Iraq, after the speaker is chosen, the parliament of Iraq is required to elect the president of Iraq with a two-thirds majority (somewhere around 220 votes) within 30 days after the first parliamentary session. If parliament is unable to proper choose a president in the first round, then the two candidates that won the most votes will be put in a second round. If one of the candiates has higher votes then the other, then they become president.
After the president is chosen, they are mandated to appoint the leader of the political bloc with highest amount of seats as prime minister. The prime minister then forms a new cabinet and have the nominee be approved by parliament through a vote-of-confidence within either 15 or 30 days. This election was organized after parliamentary sessions in relation to the leadership were completed between 29âÂÂ30 December 2025.
The role of the president is informally reserved for a person of Kurdish ethnicity as part of a confessional quota, along with a Sunni Muslim being the speaker of Parliament, and a Shia Muslim as prime minister. This unofficial quota, known as the Muhasasa system, was established after the United States invasion of Iraq.
An agreement between the PUK and KDP is that a nominee of the former party will be able to possess the role of president while the latter will govern the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region. The agreement has been criticised for encouraging corruption and sectarian splits. The KDP has also reportedly started to plan to run for president against the PUK's candidate.
Incumbent prime minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani's Coordination Framework endorsed former leader Nouri al-Maliki as the new prime minister in order to be appointed. US President Donald Trump has called the decision as "a very bad choice" for nominating al-Maliki due to previous allegations of deepening sectarianism in Iraq.